If wishes were horses...

[sarea]

You know what D/G needs? Its own site, where writers can register and post their D/G-oriented fic. All ratings would be accepted. The rules would be, "D/G, and whatever the hell other ships you want." Portkey and Checkmated are both fine sites, but they're H/Hr and R/Hr oriented, which means that a D/G writer is in this awkward position of having two places to archive his/her fic, depending on what the subpairings in the story are. This also means that sometimes, story direction gets decided by where the story can get posted, which is not the ideal way to plan a story -- and yet, who can blame a writer for doing so?

After corresponding with the lovely bunny_wabit, I now know for sure that you can't "break" the H/Hr ship on Portkey regardless of which ship pairing you're placing the story under. And because it's an H/Hr-focused site, the reverse isn't true for the others (you can post H/Hr stories that break the other ships). That is completely the prerogative of the site's maintainers, and I respect that. Sure, it bothers me a little, but the main issue is that that means, even though Portkey is a D/G-friendly site, I can't post the whole spectrum of what I might write wrt D/G. I can only post D/G + H/Hr or D/G + no Harry romance + no Hermione romance fics. That is way limiting for me. From what I can tell of the rules at Checkmated, it's the exact same kind of limitation, only w/ R/Hr instead of H/Hr. And in fact, I'm not even allowed the option of D/G without R/Hr, which at least at Portkey would be acceptable (meaning D/G only).

I'm just throwing this out there, mainly to vent, and maybe with the hopes that someone who can actually do something about it will hear my plea. I don't have the expertise, personality, or resources to create/maintain such a site, but something like that would rock my socks off.

Comments

[fearthainn.livejournal.com]

Personally I think the strange moral attitude behind adult HP fic is because it's a children's book. (Won't somebody please think of the children!?) Obviously there are hosting sites out there for whom it is not a big deal, but the decision behind taking NC-17 fic down off the MT archive was because at the time Yahoo WAS cracking down and TOS-ing anyone and everyone in sight. A number of people lost their geocities websites because of adult content, and MT decided, better safe than sorry.

I can understand the reasoning behind most hosting providers not allowing adult content - it's mostly geared to preventing people setting up porn sites on their servers, which cause a HUGE amount of traffic and spam and general hassle. But that means that mild-mannered writers of erotica get the shaft. I mean, I could probably get away posting high-rated stuff anyway, but it's not worth it to me. I know my web-host and she's a great gal, and I'd rather not be a headache for her. (Ironically, all the NC-17 fic I've ever written is only archived at my Yahoo group. Hee.)